


at the end of the world

by ladyzanra



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Episode Tag, Episode: s09e21 King of the Damned, M/M, Mark of Cain, Sad, Season/Series 09, Weak Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-09
Updated: 2014-05-09
Packaged: 2018-01-23 23:04:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1582670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyzanra/pseuds/ladyzanra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas finds him.</p><p>coda for 9x21</p>
            </blockquote>





	at the end of the world

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20-36peh16E), which I listened to approximately a million times while writing this. (It took me a very long time to write this.)

Dean's only had two shots when a brownish shape fills the space next to him and, yeah, the dude's sitting next to him on purpose. Jesus. Dean just wants to be left the fuck alone.

“Heard you killed the Queen,” says the demon, leaning in, when the bartender moves to the other end of the bar. “Heard you stuck her like a pig.”

Dean doesn't reply.

“Heard you ganked her in like, five minutes.” The demon's meatsuit has a voice like Bobby's, slow and dry. “Abaddon was _my_ Queen,” it hisses. “I was gonna be her right-hand man back in Hell.”

“Well,” Dean says, because this problem doesn't seem to be going away on it's own. “That's... pathetic.”

If this is a fight, then fine. Not like he can really get drunk anymore anyway; the Mark gets in the way, makes sure he never really loses himself. Except to _it._

He's got the blade, got it wrapped up in a makeshift sheath inside his jacket. Couldn't risk leaving it in the bunker where Sam could just pick it up and hide it away somewhere safe, like he'd wanted to. Couldn't trust Sam.

The demon laughs. “Damn, you got that right.” Dean looks at him. He's got a round face and small beady eyes. “Didn't last very long, did the bitch? Heard you were gonna gank Crowley next.”

“Is he your new Queen?”

“Him? Mr. human-blood-junkie father of the year? I wasn't loyal to him _before_ , let alone now,” the demon wheezes with more laughter.

“So. What.” Dean looks around the small dive at the few people inside it. “You got some tips on where I can find him?”

“Might,” nods the demon. “First, you gotta make a deal with me, Dean Winchester.”

_For the love of._

“When you take Hell, I want to be your second in command.”

“When I take Hell?” Dean repeats, incredulous.

“Well yeah. With Abaddon and Crowley both gone, the Iron Throne's empty and wide open. And who's gonna take their seat except the one who took them both out in the first place? Let me put it this way: what demon's gonna dare challenge you?”

“All of them,” Dean barks. “Because they're demons!”

“We ain't all as simple as you think,” the demon replies, unfazed.

Dean still has some self-control. “Okay. Why don't you grab your buddies,” Dean nods to the demon in blue plaid sitting at the other end of the bar and at the two sitting in the booth behind them, “and we take this outside so we can really talk.”

It only hits Dean as he says it: he can see demons again. At least, he somehow knows the difference, even if he can't really see their ugly, tortured trueforms yet.

For a brief moment, he can feel his heart pounding with the shock. Then he's just.

Calm again.

The demon agrees, and Dean takes off for the door, swings it open without looking back. He scans the street from left to right, heads past a drugstore and a restaurant and a few closed stores and down a side alley that dead ends and is flanked by windowless brick.

He walks almost to the end of it. Listens as the three of them follow him. Tucks one hand quietly into his jacket. “So here's what I think of your plan,” he says.

It's over almost as soon as it begins.

He beheads the Bobby-lookalike and runs the second one through. The third one he kicks to the ground first before he stabs, and stabs, and stabs. Kicks the corpse over and stabs some more.

His blood is racing in the best possible way and it turns his anger into precision. There's a purity about this – to meaning exactly what you're doing, and doing it with such bold, powerful strokes. To showing someone – some _things_ – just how angry you actually fucking are.

“Dean.” But somebody else doesn't seem to agree. “Dean, that's enough!” Christ.

Dean looks up challengingly over the sprawl of corpses, toward the mouth of the alley. Cas's hands are in his pockets and his face is sharp and tense.

Dean feels another wild heartbeat escape from the cage around his heart. He glares at Cas and works his jaw.

“Dean, please, just put it down. He's already thoroughly dead.”

Dean looks at the body he's kneeling over and then back up, blinks a few times. There's blood – or something – on his eyelash and it's making his eye stick together. He looks at the blade, at the sticky jaw bone, the bloodied gums and teeth. Blinks a few more times and confusion waves over him. He lets the blade drop.

Lets Cas carefully, unthreateningly pick it up. Cas spots the discarded cloth Dean had been using as a sheath and rewraps the blade without cleaning it off. Dean watches him resentfully, staying where he is. There's a full moon tonight, and the alley is as bright as it is dark and hidden. The lines of Cas's face are clearly visible, but at the same time reserved and unreadable.

“How'd you know --” Dean stops. “Sam.”

“Yes. And I tracked your phone with the GPS function.” Cas looks back at Dean, the blade in his hand. He seems unsure of what to do with it. _Yeah, okay, hold on to it a little longer,_ Dean thinks, _go ahead, keep pissing me off. That's what you do best._

“He told me the blade might be having a negative effect on you,” Cas says warily. “I decided to come see for myself.”

“Wow. Isn't this a little below your pay grade, _Commander_?”

Cas's face falls. “Dean, I already told you, that wasn't my – “ He sighs, giving up, and looks around the alley. “Who were they?” he asks in a tired voice. “What did they way?”

Dean shrugs standoffishly. “What do you think? They wanted the blade.”

Cas stares at him. He knits his brow a little. “Even though they can't use it?”

Dean shrugs. Like, _demons are stupid, okay_.

“And. So you gave it to them,” Cas says.

“Yup.”

Cas just keeps staring at him.

“Look, we done here? You gonna give me back what's mine?” Dean didn't want to have to ask it. But it turns out he wants the blade more than he cares about people knowing he wants it, when push comes to shove.

To Dean's surprise, Cas hands it over.

Cas has wrapped the cloth around it in a loose, clumsy way that jars with his usual dire precision.

“Dean, Sam's right,” Cas says as Dean stands up.

Dean just looks at him, moves his mouth wordlessly for a while. “About what?”

“The blade is changing you. And so is the mark. Look around you.”

“Uh, I killed demons,” Dean says defiantly.

“You enjoyed it.”

Dean rolls his eyes, because seriously, like he hasn't heard this one already? Find something else to put on your goddamn pamphlets.

“Dean.”

“Yeah well, you sure seemed concerned, just watching it all happen. You didn't try to stop me until I was already done.” He stares at Cas angrily and keeps his real anger a secret: the truth is he's angry at Cas's hypocrisy, angry that Cas stopped him at all.

“I had to be sure.”

“And uh, sending me off to torture an angel, was that your way of making sure, too?”

“Actually yes.” Cas's eyes glint in the moonlight. Dean's not used to the way Cas is maintaining eye contact. “I was watching you the entire time.”

“Was Sam in on—never mind, I don't wanna know. You know how _lame_ that is, right?” Dean feels a little sick to his stomach at this whole fucking situation. “Fact I'm not even sure I buy it. I think you just don't wanna get your new graced-up hands dirty.”

Cas deflates and looks down. Then he leans closer and says, “I'm worried about you. I want to help you.”

“Don't need your help, Cas. These days, it's more like you need mine.” He pats Cas on the shoulder sarcastically before turning toward the alley exit. “Don't worry, you got it.”

“Dean."

“You should get back to your army and work on that hack problem before it gets worse--”

Cas's hand shoots out and grabs Dean by the arm.

Right where the Mark is branded, burning into Dean's skin.

“If the Mark is truly having no effect, this won't do anything to you,” Cas says, as Dean whips around angrily. “If it is, I hope you forgive me.” And then something cool and gentle streams down Dean's arm, like he's put his arm in a running river or under a fountain.

Dean stops. It's like Cas is putting out a fire in his veins, a deep pain Dean hadn't even realized was there.

He looks at Cas and at the bodies and at the blood and all of a sudden horror caves in on him, like it's post-Hell all over again, and then he really does feel sick. Then he's staring at Cas, _Cas,_ weirdly real, blue eyes so focused on him, mouth tender, and Dean has no clue where Dean's the last twenty minutes, what was wrong with him.

It doesn't last. The grace sputters suddenly and fades, and the fire comes rolling down his arm again, like an injection, a shot of adrenaline. Dean feels something inside him deaden, close up again.

But he doesn't close up completely. Not right away. Not before he questions the way the grace slipped or notices the tremor in Cas's hand. That part sticks.

“Cas.” He clears his throat and says more aggressively, “What was that?”

“I temporarily lifted the curse. I'm guessing you felt it, after all--”

“Damn it, Cas, that's not what I meant. _Cas_.” Cas isn't looking at him. And then when he _is_ , his chest is heaving and his eyes are glittering, and that's another little door stopper wedged between Dean and the Mark. “Cas.” Dean finds there is still some softness left in him.

“I tried to tell you,” Cas's voice has a sort of desperate steadiness to it. “I am not the 'Commander' you think I am.” His eyes glance down to Dean's mouth and back again.

“What does that mean?” Dean says. Practically whispers. “What are you talking about?”  
  
Cas doesn't talk about it.

He presses his mouth to Dean's, fast and all of a sudden, and he kisses Dean even when Dean only barely returns it, kisses him like it's the end of the road or he's trying to make up for lost time. Or like.

Dean gets it. He feels it in Cas's hunger and the slight shudder as Cas pulls away, feels the weakness of Cas's breathing. Something is wrong with Cas. Seriously wrong.

Cas immediately looks away, as if he's ashamed of himself, hates himself. Like he's somehow taken advantage of Dean.

And okay. Dean's not exactly in the mood for this, but he's not that far gone either. There's still a wedge in the door. He remembers a time when, if he's being cut-the-crap honest with himself, he'd wanted this. Not Cas in trouble but Cas here, in his arms. Cas, period. Beneath the Mark's hold, his chest is pounding in shock. He's stunned.

“I'm not--” Cas begins, but Dean cuts him off, kisses him gently back. Cas inhales, about as surprised as Dean had been, “--okay.”

Dean can guess what it is without asking. It's the foreign grace. He'd be lying if he told himself it'd never crossed his mind there'd be consequences. He'd just tried to forget about it.

“And neither are you.” Cas's chest is rising and falling as he looks at Dean and there's a crease between his eyes that's like, upset and rueful and vulnerable and terrible at once, even if Dean feels like he's viewing it from a hundred miles away. Dean thinks distantly that Cas is looking at him this way even when Dean is splattered in blood, that he kissed him like this.

That under any other circumstance, Dean would be freaking the fuck out right now. Would feel the full force of it.

He leans his forehead against Cas's, like he's trying to be there with him, trying to feel. And Cas does this awkward thing where he sort of noses up at first to look at Dean because he doesn't know what this is. But that's just Cas for you and Dean doesn't say anything about it and Cas catches on quickly. And then they're both standing there with their heads bowed against each other, forming a receptacle for conversation, something locked and safe and their own.

“They wanted to join me,” Dean murmurs.

“Join you?” Cas's voice is intimately deep this close, as opposed to just normally deep. “ _Demons_?”

“Pretty sure it wasn't anything deep or lifelong. They think with Crowley as weak as he is, that I'm gonna be the new boss in Hell. I think they just wanted to get good seats.”

Cas looks up so quickly that he almost doesn't pull away enough at the same time, and narrowly misses clocking Dean in the cheek. “Why would they think that? You're not going back to Hell.” Dean's laid back delivery only makes it worse. Cas is as angry as he'd been at Gadreel when he'd found out that it was Gadreel inside Sam, except that the object of his anger isn't in front of him this time.

“Yeah,” Dean shrugs at the carnage in the alley. “That's what I told em.”

“ _You're never going back to Hell_ ,” Cas says with vehemence, grabbing Dean just above the elbows, as if the problem is more immediate than Dean realized. He's doing that thing like Dean's too dense to get it the first time. He's speaking so loudly and deliberately that it makes you wonder how many cards he really has left, apart from his vocal insistence.

At the moment, Dean thinks, that number is small or none at all.

Dean lowers his eyes. Nods slowly. Looks back up and says, “I know. I'm not.”

And then he doesn't really want to stand there trying to figure out from Cas's expression whether Cas believes him or not. Cas's expressions are too subtle to decipher only by moonlight. Dean will only see what he expects to see, and he only expects Cas to look hurt or helpless or worse.

In addition to.

Dean extracts himself from Cas's hold, the bundled up blade catching a little in Cas's coat as Dean turns back toward the street.

He doesn't know what to do. He has no fucking clue how to help Cas. Doesn't know what to do about Hell, or the blade, and doesn't think about it. Maybe he's panicking but it's hard to tell. Maybe he's shutting down. Maybe it's the Mark. He keeps walking, doesn't look back.

And with each step he takes, he's a little less upset, he's able to shove it all down a little more. The door inside him closes and there's no light on in the room. And it's better this way. It's more comfortable.

He heads down the street and down another. Cas doesn't following him. And yeah, good. Because now he remembers. He remembers that all he really wanted this whole time was to be left alone.

 

 


End file.
